Perseverance may be collecting data millions of miles away, but Lake Salda may help us understand that data.
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00:00Right now, NASA's Perseverance rover is looking for signs of life on Mars, after having traveled
00:08millions of miles to get there.
00:10But now experts are saying that perhaps the best place to help us understand what Mars
00:14was like if and when it had life and water might be right here on Earth.
00:18This is Lake Salda in Turkey.
00:20According to NASA, the minerals and rocks found here have a surprisingly similar composition
00:24to those found on Mars, specifically those found near the Deziro crater, which was once
00:28thought to be flooded with water and where Perseverance is currently roving.
00:32Which is why scientists are now collecting samples from Lake Salda, all in the hopes
00:36they will help provide better ways of detecting microbial life on the Martian surface.
00:40Here's Thomas Zeroukhan, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
00:44to explain.
00:45Well, Lake Salda during that entire time will serve as a powerful analog in which we can
00:51learn and interrogate, kind of come up with ideas that we can go try at Lake Salda, but
00:57before we use it at Perseverance or when we find something at Perseverance, we can
01:02go back to look at Lake Salda to really look at both processes, but also similarities,
01:09but equally importantly, differences that are really between Perseverance and Lake Salda.
01:14Perseverance is conducting experiments while wandering around Mars, but it's also gathering
01:19and storing samples, which will be collected by another mission sometime in the next 10 years.
01:27NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology